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How I Made $1,000,000 dollars in 3 years blogging

Before we start, blogging changed my life. I can’t believe just how much it’s changed, and how quickly. If you want to know how I managed to make $3m+ blogging, buy multiple properties in Thailand and London, build my DREAM MANSION in Chiang Mai, , visit every country in the world, climb the 7 summits, and never have to work in an office again then here’s my guide on how to start a travel blog of your own in less than 30 minutes. Don’t be one of the crowd, life’s too short for that. It can all start with a travel blog. 

2024 EDIT: I have now made over well over $3,000,000USD from my travel blog and affiliation with it. People jump from Instagram, to YouTube, to TikTok chasing the next shiny object. I’ve stuck with my blog and it’s still going strong. There’s a big lesson there.

This week (2024 EDIT: this was originally written in 2015) I’ve thought long and hard about writing this post or not, worried about negative feedback. Concerned that people would think I’m full of sh*t, coming across as conceited or boastful. But then I remembered a time when I was super broke, five years ago, traveling across Asia, and I read something about people making money blogging and it changed my life. So I’m hoping this can do the same for even one person who reads this.

How I Changed My Life

I was 26 years old. Since finishing university at 22 years old, I had hit the road. Taught English in Thailand and Korea. The with the money that I earned from teaching, I had visited 20 or 30 countries across Asia.  

Teaching English had allowed me to scramble together funds for the next leg of my dream to visit every country in the world (197 countries, if you’re asking). The next leg would be an attempt to travel from was Japan to Australia without flights (EDIT 2024* I managed it all the way down to East Timor, but then had to fly from West Timor to Australia). But realistically, for me, this teaching for peanuts, saving a little money and hitting the road wasn’t a long-term solution. I wanted the freedom, I wanted this lifestyle but I couldn’t live my life with no financial security.

Dreaming of not being broke anymore

Although I was still young,  I didn’t enjoy looking forward and envisaging a life where I couldn’t afford to have a family. I couldn’t afford to go back to Ireland and see friends. My dream house (check the youtube video of my $1m dream house in Chiang Mai, Thailand) would remain a dream. And then I wanted to think about my future kids and a great education for them. And for me to be able to enjoy true freedom to live the life I want.

A lot of people, and travel bloggers in particular talk about the romance of being broke and traveling. And it’s true, it is a beautiful thing. Not knowing where you’ll end up, scoring some cheap flights on a whim and traveling to a new continent. It’s exhilarating. But forever? No chance. Being broke is fun when you’re young and in my experience, the novelty of a broke, nomadic existence didn’t last forever. I found myself dreaming of something a little more. Marrying both the lifestyle of a traveler, with the income of a businessperson.

I might have been dreaming, but it was a dream I would strive for. Every day. Until I reached it. Ideas about becoming a Digital nomad and lifestyle design were on the up. Rumours of people working from their laptops, traveling the world were being whispered about in hostel dorms. Tim Ferriss was getting famous. I wanted a slice. I had to do it.

Starting My Blog

I read an article by a blogger making $3000USD a month from his travel blog. When I delved a little deeper I realised he wasn’t doing anything particularly special. I figured I had experienced a lot more of the world than most travel bloggers, and if all I have to is write about it, then there’s no reason why I couldn’t hang up my English teaching hat and blog instead. One small flaw, my tech skills are on power with my singing and dancing skills – non-existent. To cut a long story short, I hired an awesome Filipino guy, gave him $100 and  onestep4ward.com was born in 2010, here’s the first version I blogged on:

Getting a Real Job

In 2010, I had been travelling and teaching English for 3 or 4 years. Still broke, I had moved to Sydney, Australia on a working holiday visa and had a ‘real’ job. In an office. With a shirt and shoes. It was my first and only ‘real world’ experience, and although I loved Sydney, loved my friends there, and am hugely grateful for the experience, I hated the nine to five. So, from the office, I started my blog. Before long I quit and flew one way to Africa.

Cape Town to Cairo overland

I had saved some cash from my job in Australia but hadn’t made a penny online yet. Depressed working in an office, I quite, and flew one way to Zimbabwe (as you do!), and began an epic journey from South Africa to Syria overland. Then, one very special day in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia I went to an internet cafe to check my mail. Boom. A guy called Baba Bojang wanted an advert on my site.  I literally didn’t believe it, convinced my friends had hatched a plan to tease me. $60 in my PayPal later and something big had changed. Suddenly, I had made my first little chunk of money on the internet. I now believed it was possible. Wow.

Believing it was possible

That $60 changed my mindset. It WAS possible. Within six months I was making $500 a month, another three or four months, it was $1000. I was now making more money from blogging than I had made teaching English. I moved to Bangkok, it was 2011 and it was the start of my new life.

The revenue increased month on month. But I was partying too hard, thinking I had hit the jackpot. I was up to around $2500 a month, working five or six hours a week, ‘living the dream’ in Thailand until I realised that wasn’t the dream at all. I wasn’t dreaming big enough. If I can make this much money from one website, imagine if I had three, or five, or twenty??

So I expanded my website portfolio. I hired a guy from Bangladesh and we built two more sites. What happened next was a watershed moment. I bought a website from someone for the first time.

I had managed to save $9k from my blogging endeavours, and I used $8000 of it to buy a fourth website. I was for real now. It sounds like a brave decision, but it wasn’t at all. I was terrified. I called my mum, then called her again, and again. My sister, my mates, everyone was getting called. “Can I really blow $8k on ONE site? I could travel for six months with that”. But I did it, and I made the money back in six weeks. More belief.

$30k a month income

That was towards the end of 2012, and for the next three years, I expanded and expanded. I started five more sites and bought more, and more until I had more than one hundred websites.

Next I hired a tech guy to manage my sites, Aghosh, who to this day is my saviour. Then, I hired a couple of writers to write the content for all my sites, I hired a few sales guys to manage the corporate blogging, social media management, SEO link sales, copywriting tasks and advertising (huge thanks to Chris, Nick L, Nick B, Carlo and most of all Carl, who has since become one of my best mates and is still killing it every day).

Eventually, I created the face of my digital media company step4wardmedia.com to establish ourselves fully (although this site is still technically live, I do 99% of my business through email these days). At no point did I get an office, and no point did I require anyone to report their hours to me. We all worked from our laptops, all trusted each other, and all got along as friends. Digital nomads, all of us.

Failed Start-Ups

The travel blog revenue kept coming, we stayed humble, kept working, always thinking about how to diversify, how to keep living the dream. Google tweaked a few things which damaged my business model a lot about 5 years ago, more than halving my revenue, so although profits went down, I stuck with it. It’s now back thankfully.

With mu buddy Carl, I launched an education startup in Hong Kong called Find A Tutor (EDIT 2024: START-UP NUMBER 2 FAILED!), and that was a huge learning curve for us both. Ouch. Here’s a screenshot of our beta site for anyone who is interested:

Becoming a millionaire from a travel blog in my early 30s

And so here we are today, I’m writing this from my small two-bedroom apartment in Bangkok which I bought mortgage-free last year. I spend three months a year in Thailand, the other nine months I spend traveling around the big, bad world. I’ve had a couple of skype meetings this morning about Find A Tutor and  Step4WardMedia and the rest of my Monday I’m off on a date with my girl. This weekend I’m going to Kuwait, my 142nd country out of 197 countries, en route to finishing my goal of visiting every country in the world (EDIT* I did it!). I’ll be in London and Ireland next week to get yet another new passport, then I’m spending the rest of the year in Africa, all the time logging on and managing this crazy life from my four-year-old MacBook.

The first couple of years blogging, before I really cracked it with multiple sites, provided enough money for me to travel and live from, while also expanding my portfolio a bit. Ranging between $500 pm in the middle of 2010 all the way up to about $4500, just before I expanded aggressively in 2012.

So eight days ago, I calculated that in the last three years I’ve cracked the $1,000,000 barrier of making money online from my travel blog. In those three years, my best month was almost $60 000USD and my worst was just shy of $12,000USD. It doesn’t seem real to be honest. I am not a tech expert, nor did I grow up in a business-orientated house. No one told me I could do it, and no one taught me how to do it. But you know what? If a small-town Irish guy can do it, then there is literally no reason why you can’t. Believe in yourself, follow your dreams and don’t listen to anyone who tells you-you can’t. I’m not stopping where I am, and neither should you. Good luck everyone, and see you on the road.

2024 Update

As I write this, in my 7500 square feet house, things have certainly changed! I’ve since made over $3m blogging. I’ve built my dream house. More than that, I’ve also built my mum a house in Thailand too so she’s near me.

I’ve got married, my wife is pregnant. I finished the every country thing, the highest peaks in the world, ran marathons at both the North and South Pole, and a lot more along the way. And it all came because I started a travel blog. It blows my mind.

If you have any questions, just email me or instagram.com/onestep4ward DM me. I’m a normal guy. And this is now my life. No reason why you can’t do it too.